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​In my last post, I shared the many assessment mistakes I’ve made over the years. Blunders aside, I actually love spring assessments for one simple reason. The spring assessment gives me an opportunity to show my students the big picture and remind them that the best reward of all is taking ownership of their own progress. This is usually just a short conversation, but it’s one of the most important talks I will have with them. Read more

​Is it really assessment season again? It feels like yesterday that I opened the lab at this new school, met my students, and screened them for reading difficulties using benchmark assessment. The winter assessment window seemed to arrive just a short time after that. And now it’s springtime already, and spring assessment window is almost here. It is time to prepare to assess the students yet again. Read more

In order to know whether a student has made enough progress to exit a Read Naturally program, you need to assess the student with grade-level material. It is important to celebrate your student’s daily growth from cold to hot timings in a story, the student’s goal being increased and the student moving up a level. It is also exciting to see a student’s cold-timing scores increase from story to story. These are all indications that the student’s reading skills are improving and that he or she is making progress in the program. But it is essential to keep the long-term goal in mind. Read more

Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot likes to tell the story of a little boy who went from struggling to fluent using the Read Naturally program. When Candyce asked the boy how he got to be such a good reader, he said with a smirk, “It was nothing you did.” Rather than be offended by his brutal honesty, Candyce was delighted. The boy was taking due credit for his own accomplishment. He had come to understand that he’d possessed the tools for success all along. Having found the confidence and fortitude to master a huge challenge, he could now draw on those qualities again and again—without his teacher’s help. Read more

Our teacher’s manuals are packed full of useful information about how to implement our programs effectively. They’re extraordinarily well researched and include hundreds of helpful suggestions. Have you read them recently? Cover to cover?

Don’t worry if the answer is no. We know how busy teachers are, and we want to make it easy on you to implement our programs with fidelity. That’s why we’ve created Fidelity Checklists. Download as many as you’d like—they’re free on our website! Read more

The fact that so many students love working in Read Naturally programs brings us great joy. But we are most delighted when students no longer need our programs. The whole point of a Read Naturally intervention is to one day exit the program as a fluent and confident reader. The sooner this day comes for a student, the better! Read more

Welcome to the second half of the school year! Are you ready to see your Read Naturally students crush their goals and accelerate their progress? As you know, they will improve most rapidly when they’re working in the sweet spot of challenging but not frustrating material. Thanks to the detailed graphs and reports in Read Naturally Live, finding this sweet spot is easier than ever. The Students-at-a-Glance report is a particularly useful tool for quickly identifying students who are not working with optimal levels or goals, or students who need extra support in key areas. Read more

Churchill Elementary School in Cloquet, MN was named a 2022 Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education for "Exemplary Achievement Gap Closing." It was the only Elementary School in Minnesota to receive this recognition. Read Naturally Live is a big part of the school’s success. Read more

Phonics skills are foundational to reading fluently and with comprehension. It's essential for reading teachers to determine which students need phonics support and what that support should look like. Read Naturally is here to support your students’ phonics needs every step of the way—from assessment, to intervention, to ongoing skill maintenance. Read more

Claire Ihnot Hayes is an Educational Consultant for Read Naturally who meets with educators nationwide to train them in Read Naturally programs. One of the most frequent questions Claire receives from educators is, “How can I adapt Read Naturally programs to meet the various needs of my students?” Older students, younger students, and ELL students have different needs and thus require different adjustments. We recently sat down with Claire to document her favorite tips for adapting Read Naturally Live to optimize success for a diverse body of students. These tips work for Encore students as well. Read more